Before I get into that I suppose I should back up and tell you about the 1 hour of sleep I had on my way into Montreal. You heard right, 1 hour. I slept 1 hour in Beantown before I roused and showered and caught a shuttle from the less than stellar holiday inn where I was staying back to Logan and then on a tiny two by two plane up north. I arrived and took a "car" to the hotel, yeah so I splurged and took a ride in a nice leather lincoln, I'm trying to learn from my very well travelled collegue, DF.
My driver clued me into something I didn't know up until that moment: Montreal is an Island. So I wasn't asleep as we flew over the St. Lawrence, but I didn't quite take note that it was a giant island we were passing over. What I saw was a river, and that it looked as if it split here and there. I had no clue that it wasn't a choice of "river banks" but rather mainland vs. island.
The trip to the hotel took markedly longer "inbound" than it did on the way out. It was morning about half past eight and people were on their way to work. I cursed and I spit and I wished that I had made that morning flight. My skin was crawling with caffeine poisoning already. I made a pot at the hotel, bought a cup at the airport and could already feel the need, the hunger, the absolute mania that comes with knowing that it will do nothing but knowing that its better than just that, nothing.
I checked in, the woman behind the desk was cute and her french accent made her even cuter. It was my first "run-in" with the cute french accent. It became old after a while, or rather I didn't notice it, it just became something very pleassant, hearing mixed francaphone and englephone conversations.
The room was great, a wonderful view of the city from the 16th floor and out to the river. I dropped my things and jumped into the conference. I'm not going to go into great detail about the MAAWG conference, only that it was an illuminating experience and I have a stack of great business cards. I met people that I had spoken to on the phone, via email, and in some cases only read and hear about. Scott Richter, one of the most notorious spammers, was there. When asked about his past he responded: "I was a high volume mailer at one time, but now I'm a low volume mailer." (second hand from Kate). I mean the guy's whitelisted at AOL even though he was prosecuted under CAN-SPAM. Yeah, many interesting and intriguing people crossed my path. I think it was wednesday night though that takes the cake. Not sure quite how, but I know that it had something to do with a tall brunette from RBC (royal bank of canada), that I wound up on the 28th floor in the suite of Johnathan, the cat from Bell Canada, for the VIP after gala reception, party party. He was wandering around the mezzanine. Most of the folks either left after the free booz dried up, or went to the bar, or to bed, but a few brave souls were definately around. He gathere all that were left on the mezzanine and heareded us up to this suite that had an entire bathtub full of beer. People began to arrive, two large bottles of bacardi materializeed, a case of wine became fair game and I just continued to drink beer ontop of the gawd awful canadian club whiskey I had downstairs. While avoiding a particularly drunk woman from RSA I found my "friend" for the night, Foy. A good ol' boy from the south who did his time in the military, and then had a kind of spiritual awakening. We spent hours talking. People would come to our corner, where we made a makeshift ashtray, and stood discussing Nietzsche, hesse, nabokov and anything else we could sink our teeth into. We crossed the proverbial good conduct lines and discussed religion and politics, two things that should never be discussed at either the dinner table, or the bar.
The following morning was very painful. As a matter of fact I'm just going to pretend it didn't happen. Woke, showered, packed, checked out, missed all important conferences to medicate with ginger ale and catching up on email. Said adieu to new found friends and hopped the metro for St. Henri and Fiona.
Turns out I was maybe 10 - 12 minutes by train from her nieghborhood, Place St. Henri, which also happens to be the neighborhood where Oscar Peterson came from. I arrived to a large and modern metro station, hopped the escalator heading up and heard from above my name "Shneyder!" I turned round and round and finally found the bouret wearing speck that grew larger as I rode skyward. It was a hug and we were off for the pad. As we stepped outside the station the first snow began to fall. It was, well it wasn't quite snow, it like glitter, or maybe it was my imagination, but something passed through the air that Fiona called snow and it fluttered around, swirled a bit even, and then vanished as if it hadn't ever been there. That was the first snow.
We dropped my things, had a pot of tea and then headed out. Our first stop was Cafe Popolo where I met several of her friends: Heater and her beau Neal, both students, one at Concordia and the other at an engineering school, McGill I think. From the cafe we went to shopping, oh yeah, it was Fi's birthday and she had geld to spend from her vati. We eventually found our way to a shop, the name escapes me, but where the clothes are all hand made by the propieter who spent a good half hour talking music and playing different CDs for my eager ears. I took three of them with me "Len, you're single handedly supporting the independant music scene here in Montreal." I know, what can I say, I'm a whore for new music at all times.
From there it was off to another cafe, this time the name I can't even begin to recall, bumped into another classmate (this was to become a routine, in a city of 3 million its pretty common), and sat around waiting for Richard to return from visiting his father in Ottowa. Richard is Fi's boyfriend, they live together and I'm quite fond of both of them. I had met Fiona in St. Petersburg and had some rather great conversations, not to mention a fabo dance partner at "The Bunker". You know how you meet two people and there's something about their dynamic, about the simplicity of it, or maybe the way their personalities magnify each other, that seems perfect? yeah, that was kinda the two of them. It was fun hanging out with them for that reason alone.
Richard arrived and we were off to a Peruvian restaraunt to meet Sam, the other dinner guest. He was already there when we arrive and sit down to learn that almost half the menu is unavaialable because a massive group came in without phoning ahead, in the range of 30 - 40 people, when we arrived they were wrapping up, and the restaurant was a desolate place once they had departed. Anyway, there was no fish, there was no chorizo, there was... well what, I had... heart ke-bobs or chicken. I settled for a beef soup that was out of this world and the heart kebobs which were tasty if you like liver as much as I do. During dinner another concordia classmate joined, us Katia. She ordered a plate of veggies hung out.
From the restaurant it was off to a brew pub that amazing beer while merrily walking through the streets rasta style, yeah, its quite liberal there. As a matter of fact, its very liberal there in that regard. The pub was incredibly small and corwded and it seemed as if everyone in the area and beyond wanted to go exactly there and drink the same thing. Conversations flowed through the room on the breath of the heavy smoke in fractured forms of English and French. It was wonderful.
Eventually, the overwpowering smoke, drove Fiona out, she can't really take it, but by that point, I was fealing the night hanging heavy and was happy to go.
And that's how I closed out my first night in Montreal, free of the MAAWG. Part two and three will have to wait until the morrow, I'm tired and its time to head to Ireland's 32 for the Torri release party reading with friends Kris & John.
I'll end this post with a photo of Piere Trudeau, the JFK of Canada if you will. He was a wildly populare primeminister and something of an icon. He was caught at Buckingham palace, while the Queen's back was turned, doing a pirouette. The airport is named after him.
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